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Apr 14,2020
Newsletter n° 1 Case TM ∣ Supreme People’s Court Ruling on Christian Dior 3D Mark Selected as a “Guiding Case”
On December 24, 2019, the Judicial Committee of China’s Supreme People’s Court (SPC) listed the SPC ruling on the Christian Dior 3D trademark dated April 26, 2018, as No. 114 "Guiding Case". This ruling overturned the decisions of the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board (TRAB), of the Beijing IP Court and of the Beijing High Court, which had refused the registration of Christian Dior’s 3D trademark. The SPC ruling will therefore be binding on the Chinese courts.
The case concerns the bottle shape of Christian Dior’s perfume "J'adore", which features the shape of a teardrop, with a small globe on top and an oval-shaped lower end, ornamented with gold thread in circles along the narrow neck (see image below).
Christian Dior filed for retrial with
the Supreme People’s Court. On April 26, 2018, SPC announced its retrial
ruling, overturning the refusal decisions and ordering the TRAB to re-make its
decision. The SPC intended to point out and rectify the mistake committed by
the previous administrative and judicial authorities: they had assessed the
Dior trademark application as if it was a two-dimensional trademark, rather
than a three-dimensional trademark, and they had failed to give the applicant a
chance to supplement its application by submitting a set of pictures illustrating
the three-dimension characteristics of the trademark.
Therefore, the binding stipulations of this case are that, where it is specified in the filing documents of an international trademark application that the trademark filed is a 3D trademark, (1) it should be examined as a 3D trademark application (and not as a two dimensional sign) and (2) the Trademark Office should offer the applicant an opportunity to submit any missing documentation, such as a three dimensional view, even though such obligation is not explicitly provided in the law in respect of international trademark applications.
Christian Dior obtained the registration of this image in France, characterized as a 3D trademark, in 2014. On November 6, 2014, Christian Dior filed an application for international registration of the said mark covering “perfumery, perfumes, eau de parfum, eau de toilette, eau-de-cologne”, in Class 3, with extension to China.
On July 13, 2015, the China Trademark Office (CTMO) refused the trademark on the grounds that “the mark is devoid of distinctiveness”.
The Trademark Review and Adjudication Board (TRAB), on February 22, 2016, confirmed the refusal on the grounds that the trademark lacks distinctiveness.
Both the Beijing IP Court and the Beijing High Court upheld the TRAB’s decision.
Contributed by: Zhu Zhigang